Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion for the Court in Trump v. CASA, Inc., limiting the power of federal district judges to enter “universal injunctions” constraining the president. According to the the Court, such injunctions in which district courts assert the power to prohibit enforcement of a law or policy against anyone likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts. At pages 21-24, Justice Barrett brutally blows off Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent. “Rhetoric aside,” she observes, “JUSTICE JACKSON’s position is difficult to pin down.” And then she moves in for the pin (footnote omitted):
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We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.
No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation—in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so. See, e.g., Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803) (concluding that James Madison had violated the law but holding that the Court lacked jurisdiction to issue a writ of mandamus ordering him to follow it). But see post, at 15 (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (“If courts do not have the authority to require the Executive to adhere to law universally, . . . compliance with law sometimes becomes a matter of Executive prerogative”). Observing the limits on judicial authority—including, as relevant here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789—is required by a judge’s oath to follow the law.
JUSTICE JACKSON skips over that part. Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring “legalese,” post, at 3,she seeks to answer “a far more basic question of enormous practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?” Ibid. In other words, it is un[n]ecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.
